Freelance Writer/Editor

Coffee

31 July 2017

When Agnes Nyinawumuntu began her career as a coffee farmer two decades ago, she picked coffee “cherries" indiscriminately and with little care for quality. Back then, because she was selling her cherries to a middleman for a pittance — 250 Rwandan francs (about 30 U.S. cents) for 2 pounds of unwashed cherries — she had no incentive to select only the ripe, scarlet-colored cherries that create the best coffee.

Today, after three years of training in agronomy, cupping and roasting by the nonprofit Relationship Coffee Institute, Nyinawumuntu is paid nearly $2 a pound for her beans, and she is also the past president of the Twongere Umusaruro Cooperative in eastern Rwanda. She has become a respected figure in Rwanda’s coffee industry who is regularly asked to train other Rwandan coffee-growers in best agricultural practices. The money she has earned has lifted her family out of poverty — she was able to upgrade their earthen dwelling to a stucco house and purchase mattresses for herself and her husband and for each of their five children, as well as purchasing livestock and an additional plot of land for farming.

Over the last four years, the Relationship Coffee Institute has enrolled more than 14,000 female coffee farmers in Rwanda in its training, teaching them how to improve coffee quality throughout the growing and processing of the beans. The Relationship Coffee Institute (RCI) is a unique collaboration between a B Corp-certified coffee importer, Sustainable Harvest, and the nonprofit Bloomberg Philanthropies.

Improving economic opportunities for farmers like Nyinawumuntu is RCI’s reason for existing.

10 June 2016

Believe it or not, Haiti was once the largest coffee producer in the world. By the late 18th century, this small Caribbean nation was exporting half of the world’s supply of coffee. But over the intervening 200 years, political instability and an extreme lack of infrastructure made it hard for the country to compete in the global coffee market. During the U.S. embargo in the mid-‘90s, most coffee farmers, struggling to survive, began burning their trees to make charcoal—Haitians' only form of fuel—or ripping them out to plant staples like corn and beans.

A decade ago, a delegation from St. Thomas University in Miami Gardens, Florida, visited Port-de-Paix, in the Northwest department of Haiti. This small Catholic university has had a 36-year-long relationship with the Port-de-Paix diocese, and it has a long-term commitment to economic development in the region.

“It’s the poorest region of the poorest country in the Western hemisphere,” says Anthony Vinciguerra, director of the university’s Center of Community Engagement. It also happens to be one of Haiti’s oldest coffee growing regions, with heirloom Arabica coffee trees scattered about.

When Vinciguerra asked local church and community leaders how the university could support development in Port-de-Paix, the answer was clear: Farmers wanted help reviving their coffee industry.

“We didn't know beans about coffee!’” recalls Vinciguerra. But St. Thomas has a large population of Haitian students—many of whom study business, trade, and marketing. After an initial investment of $10,000 from a private donor, Vinciguerralaunched a student-run project that allowed students to get hands-on experience with commodity import marketing, sales, and direct trade.

The Cafèière et Cacouyere du Nord Ouest (COCANO) cooperative was born. Since then, over 200 students from disciplines ranging from international business to plant biology have worked on the project. “We even have science students who are trying to eradicate the coffee bean bore beetle with organic treatments and traps,” Vinciguerra says. Giving students these key jobs obviates the need for a coffee broker, which ensures more money for the farmers.

Crucial to the project’s success was finding roasters who could bring COCANO coffee to the global specialty coffee market. The Italian roaster Pascucci Torrefazione was the first to sign on, followed by Miami’s Panther Coffee.

Panther owner Joel Pollock, a former roaster from Stumptown, remembers his first cupping of COCANO coffee vividly.

But after showing farmers how to install drying racks (to get coffee up off the ground), and emphasizing the importance of processing coffee on the same day it’s picked, he’s seen vast improvements. The 2015 harvest, he says, was the best yet. “It’s got this sweet, chocolatey flavor with some acidity and some red fruit,” says Pollock. “It was miles ahead of the first cup I tasted.”

Before COCANO, farmers in Port-de-Paix had been earning a measly $0.60 per pound. But now, they get $3, $3.25, or $3.50 a pound, depending on the quality of their beans. (Pollock employs the “Direct Trade” model, which rewards farmers for quality by paying them well above the Fair Trade price of $2.20 a pound.)

Pulling farmers out of poverty via high-end specialty coffee is a compelling story, but Pollock, whose next cafe is opening in Miami’s Little Haiti, thinks the quality of the coffee should speak for itself. “You have all these people marketing Haitian coffee by tugging at people’s heartstrings,” he says. “We don’t want to make you feel bad about the plight of Haiti. We’re trying to make it so that if we go away, these people are still making killer coffee.”

01 July 2013

The cows at Straus Family Creamery, grazing on Tomales Bay, California

My love of milk has only increased since I was an infant, which may explain why I'm so drawn to writing about it. But I'm also fascinated by the politics of milk—and by the heated emotions that drinking the beverage—or choosing to spurn the beverage—provoke. Back in 2007—before raw milk was really a thing—I wrote an investigative feature on the controversial drink for Salon. So when an editor at Imbibe asked me if I'd like to write a story about regional dairies, of course I said yes.

As I reported this piece, I became optimistic about the re-emergence of regional dairies. Sure, the milk industry is still dominated by industrial players that co-mingle milk from hundreds of farmers—squeezing these farmers out of every last cent (hello, Horizon). But consumers are starting to get savvy about what they're drinking—not to mention who they're supporting. It's not just that they want milk that's free of antibiotics and growth hormones. (Though they do.) They also want to know where their milk is coming from—preferably traceable to one dairy as opposed to myriad unnamed dairies—and they're increasingly choosing milk from grass-fed cows, which packs a healthier punch. But perhaps most importantly, milk drinkers are looking for a milk that tastes better—and that inevitably means a milk that hasn't been "ultra-pasteurized" at 280 degrees F for two seconds, zapping it of all lactase not to mention all flavor. (Now you know why Horizon Organic lasts for months in your fridge.) After taste tests with his staff, Sam Penix, owner of Manhattan's Everyman Espresso, chose Battenkill Valley Farm's milk. "It's really malty and sweet and thick and creamy," he told me. "It pairs really well with coffee."

To read about the family-run dairies I interviewed for my story—from New York, California, and even Alabama—grab a copy of the July/August issue of Imbibe (page 62). (There are also great stories on mead, sparkling white wines, and the sugarcane industry in Martinique.) Or you can just download the PDF here: Download Imbibe_HWallace

20 October 2011

When I travel, one of the first things I do is seek out a local coffee shop. It must have character and a sense of place, of course. But equally important to me, it must source fresh beans (and pay farmers more than Fair Trade prices for them) and employ baristas who know that a small latte is made with two shots, not one. I suppose I've become a coffee snob—I want pour-over instead of drip coffee; I turn up my nose at over-roasted blends, preferring instead the tea-like qualities of a medium roast from Guatemala. How disappointing is it to pay upwards of $4 for a limpid latte?

Life is too short.

To help you in your quest for the best coffee, I singled out eight superb cafés—from London's Prufrock to Copenhagen's Coffee Collective—for an article in this month's issue of travel magazine Endless Vacation. This is by no means a definitive list. I have many other favorites—like Third Rail on Sullivan Street the West Village and Crema in Southeast Portland. But it's a good list. What are some of your favorites and why? I'd love to find out.

Coffee actually has a long history of medicinal use. In the 14th century, Arab women would drink it to alleviate menstrual discomforts; the Turks, for their part, claimed coffee was an aphrodisiac. The Indian Materia Medica prescribes coffee for everything from infant cholera to spasmodic asthma and states that coffee “assists assimilation and digestion” and even protects against malaria. In Chinese medicine, coffee would be classified as a medicinal herb that regulates liver qi and purges the gallbladder—which is to say it improves mood and promotes the production and flow of bile. (This explains coffee’s ability to prevent the formation of gallstones and alleviate constipation.)

Despite coffee's proven health benefits, many in the holistic health world scorn the beverage, saying coffee depletes the adrenal glands (among other things). Subhuti Dharmananda, Ph.D., the director of the Institute for Traditional Medicine in Portland, Oregon, disagrees. “The frequently repeated comment that caffeine causes adrenal exhaustion was based on one old and not repeated animal study,” he told me. Nonetheless, he acknowledges that coffee is not right for everyone and says moderation is key: one to three 6-8 ounce cups a day is a good range. (A Starbucks “Tall” is 12 ounces—so try to limit yourself to two Talls. And lay off the Frappuccinos. Such sugar-laden beverages are “just a mess” says Dharmananda.)

Coffee—which comes from a berry, let’s not forget—is a traditional beverage with a long history of being enjoyed by various cultures: it’s been cultivated since at least the 13th century, when Arabians began roasting and grinding the beans before brewing the bitter elixir. Michael Pollan's by-now well known edict “Don't eat anything your great-great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food” has become my mantra. I’m sure my great-great-grandmother, who lived in Baltimore in the first half of the 20th century, wouldn’t know what to make of a Frappuccino. But I bet she drank and savoured her coffee. And so, then, will I.

02 May 2009

When I first came to New York City almost 15 years ago, I was dismayed by how few independent coffee shops there were. I liked Oren’s Daily Roast, and when I moved to Brooklyn, I frequented Ozzie’s in Park Slope. And then there was that strange café run by Moonies in midtown that brewed Green Mountain coffee from Vermont. But other than that, coffee in this city was mediocre at best. I couldn't understand why some savvy entrepreneur didn't open a Pacific Northwest-style café—they'd make a killing.

Well, a lot has happened over the past 8 or so years, starting with Ninth Street Espresso, Joe the Art of Coffee, and Gimme! (in Williamsburg). But even since I reported my story on coffee cuppings last year, the number of "third-wave" coffee shops here has mushroomed. I can't keep up with the openings, mostly in Brooklyn, but some in Manhattan. (There are also a number of existing cafes that are switching to higher-quality roasters, such as City Girl on Orchard St., which now serves Stumptown.) In short, it's a good time to be a coffee drinker in New York City. (It's about time.)

That was the gist of a panel I was on yesterday at the first ever NYC Coffee Summit, hosted by the International Culinary Center and Edible Manhattan. I spoke about coffee education from the consumer's perspective: how can the typical NYC coffee drinker learn to distinguish between an Ethiopian Yirgacheffe and a Brazilian pulped natural of the Catuai variety? How can he or she learn how to make a great cup of coffee at home? My answer: chat up your barista, go to cuppings (and "home brewing" classes), and read coffee blogs.

Here's a list of cuppings and classes offered (mostly for free) in NYC and environs:

• Counter Culture coffee holds weekly cuppings on Friday at noon at Everyman Espresso (136 E 13th St between Third and Fourth Aves) and at 6PM at Roots & Vines (409 Grand St at Clinton St..) In June, they’ll start public cuppings at their brand new New York training facility.

• Café Grumpy has cuppings once a week at both locations—the dates and times are posted on their Web site. They'll also be hosting barista classes and home brewing classe @ the Chelsea location as soon as their back room renovation is complete.

• Joe the Art of Coffee has cuppings the first Monday of every month at 6:30 at the 13th street training facility, but also classes on "How to Brew Coffee at Home." (The next one is May 12 at 8:15 PM.)

• Intelligentsia has weekly cuppings at their new NYC "training lab" but also brewed-coffee tastings (the different profiles from french press vs chemex, for example), espresso tastings (four different single origins in a tasting), food and coffee pairings, plus home brewing classes, latte art classes, espresso classes, and "seed-to-cup" classes. (Daniel Humphries, now Intell's NYC guy, tells me he'll have another coffee and cheese pairing soon—not sure if that'll be under the aegis of the NYC Coffee Society or Intell.)

• Gimme! in Williamsburg has cuppings every so often—but they rarely advertise, so if you live in the 'hood, just ask a barista.

• Stumptown will start regular cuppings at Café Pedlar in Cobble Hill (or is it Carroll Gardens?) soon. (Probably Saturday afternoons.) A few of their NYC accounts hold cuppings: Variety Cafe (one of my new favorites), and Marlow and Sons (81 Broadway in Williamsburg). Lizz Hudson from Stumptown is doing a cupping on May 13 @ Spoon Catering at 17 W. 20th St.

For more on NYC's vibrant coffee scene (and its early history), see Liz Clayton's article in the latest issue of Edible Manhattan.

And finally, for those of you who could use a guide to all these third-wave cafés, check out Anne Nylander and Neil Oney's NYC and Brooklyn coffee tours. (Anne and Neil own TampTamp, Inc., a specialty coffee service firm.)

One more thing: If you're truly obsessed with coffee, James Hoffman's blog is an education in and of itself. Hoffman, who won the World Barista Championship in 2007, is based in London and I can guarantee that he's more obsessed with coffee than you are. He posts about barista championships, food chemistry, roasting and latte art, but don't miss the videocasts of him brewing coffee with the Chemex, Moka Pot, and even with snow.

Now, it's time for another cup of Ecco Caffé's Fazenda Serra do Bone from Brazil...

30 November 2008

I've been a fan of Monocle since it launched over a year ago, so I was thrilled to contribute to the magazine's feature, in the Dec./Jan. issue, on People Who Deserve a Bigger Stage in 2009. (Page 33 for those of you who don't subscribe.)

I write about Stumptown Coffee's Duane Sorenson, one of the leaders of the U.S.'s resurgent specialty coffee movement. Sorenson sources and roasts some of the finest coffee beans in the world—but what I find most inspiring about him is how he works with the farmers, teaching them how to improve their growing practices and hence the quality (and taste) of their beans. (Crucially, paying them more than what they'd get paid under Fair Trade regs.) Bikes to Rwanda is just one example of how Sorenson and his team at Stumptown think outside the box.

28 October 2008

Note to coffee entrepreneurs: you could make a killing opening a high-end coffee kiosk here. This enormous station, bustling with humanity each morning, is void of good, strong coffee—or any espresso at all, as far as I can tell. (I’ve been to at least two patisseries that advertise espresso and both tell me that they don’t, in fact, have it.) I’ve settled for a weak café crème, which tastes a bit like watered-down Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, heavy on the crème.

This lack of good coffee is typical of Paris—even at well known, popular cafes. (Fauchon’s boulangerie/café being the exception.) As luck would have it, on the last day of this trip, I discovered Café Verlet—an unpretentious little shop on the Rue St. Honoré. I’d walked past it on our first day in town and—spotting its burlap bags of coffee beans and trays of glace fruit artfully displayed in the window—made a mental note to return. Then, a few days later, a dear friend (a foodie who loves Paris and had lived here years ago) e-mailed to say she’d forgotten to tell me about this excellent café near our hotel, where all French connoisseurs (including Catherine Deneuve) buy their coffee…

Long story short, I spent three hours the next morning at Verlet, sampling and savoring single-origin espressos. The coffee menu is separated into regions—the Americas, Africa, Asia, etc.—with a special section for blends. The shots are pulled on a La Marzocco espresso machine and served in a green mug, the saucer of which is shaped like a leaf. (They also have an amazing selection of teas and a small food menu.) I will spare you my tasting notes, but needless to say, the coffee was bold, flavorful, and exquisite.

So all you coffee fiends—if you find yourself in the City of Lights, don’t give up hope. (Or do what I did and settle for Starbucks—which frankly, made the best brewed coffee I had in Paris, and also had free Wi-Fi.) Verlet is on the Right Bank a block or so from the Louvre and a few blocks from the Palais Royale.

01 August 2008

When a Milan-based editor contacted me this spring to see if I'd like to contribute to the English-language edition of an Italian food + wine magazine, I agreed—especially when he asked if I'd like to write about coffee.

This is my second article on what's going on in the U.S. coffee scene and the short answer is: a lot. To read more about the latest trends from micro-roasters and cafés such Counter Culture, Intelligentsia, Murky, Stumptown, PT's Coffee Co.—even Starbucks and Illy!—download the PDF here.

24 July 2008

In the August issue of Wired magazine, there's an in-depth story about the future of the Clover, that sexy little stainless steel machine you may have noticed at your local (highly evolved) coffee shop. It was with great relief that I read that Starbucks (which acquired the small Seattle-based company that invented and makes the Clover in March) has agreed to service the 250 Clovers that are already out there at other (non-Starbucks) cafes. (This would include my local café in Williamsburg, El Beit, where I've reverted to drinking my coffee black, so as to better appreciate the nuances of a Clover coffee.) Annoyingly, reports author Mathew Honan, the coffee behemoth will stop its goodwill there: it will not be selling Clovers to indie coffee shops from now on.

I'm sure this article (and this topic) has generated a lot of verbiage in the coffee blogosphere, so I'm going to keep this entry short. But I do think Howard Schultz should rethink this plan of cornering the market on Clovers. Let the customer decide who makes the best Clover coffee—your local Starbucks or your local independent ("third wave" or what have you) coffee shop

04 July 2008

I've just returned from a month-long jaunt across Europe—Basel, Berlin, Munich (for one night), Slovenia, and, ultimately, Istanbul. In Basel, where I did a few blogs from Art Basel for JANERA.com, I frequented smoky cafes and ultimately succumbed to the nastiest head cold I think I've ever had. Despite Basel's fame as a pharmaceutical town, I couldn't find anything to top Sudafed's nighttime formula; the strongest sinus meds at the Coop pharmacy was an aspirin + pseudoephedrine powder that I mixed into water a few times a day. To cheer myself up, I spent a morning at the Basel Zoo, which, it turns out, is Switzerland's second largest attraction after the Rheinfall.

Berlin was better—we went to artist Richard Long's opening at Haunch of Venison and stayed at the Q Hotel, where I nursed myself back to health at the awesome basement sauna. (Note to hotel staff: you should try changing the bland hip/lifestyle CD every so often, just for variety's sake.)

But our vacation didn't really start until Slovenia, where we spent three nights at a beautiful tourist farm in the Karst region (the country's Slow Food region, which is a 20 minute drive from Italy) and ate incredible meals with excellent local wines. Then it was on to Lake Bled, about which I will say very little except for that it's paradise on earth. This was our third trip to Slovenia and each time we go, we uncover new (to us) fabulous restaurants, more pristine hiking trails, and (for me) new story ideas.

My impressions of Istanbul, an overwhelming city of at least 12 million people (we kept hearing higher figures from our taksim drivers--one, when I said I'd heard there were 15 million Istanbullus, insisted that there were, in fact, 18 million), are still forming but it's a nuanced and complicated city that certainly requires more than five days to figure out. We stayed two nights on the Bosphorus and three in Sultanahmet, the old city, where we were awakened every morning by the 4:30 call to prayer from dozens of nearby mosques (including Hagia Sophia, which though it's a museum and not a functioning mosque still has a muezzin belting out prayers from one of its minarets five times a day). The JANERA.com dinner salon was a success—check back here for my blog in a few days—and Michael and I had lunch with an art collector who is a member of one of Turkey's best known (and needless to say, wealthiest) dynasties. (It was quite an adventure to speed over the Bosphorus in his private boat to his fabulous house on the Asian side.)

The food was glorious in Istanbul--we ate lots of addictive meze, spicy meatballs (köfte), and, of course, all manner of kebab. We dined with friends at an outpost of Kosebasi at Reina (this crazy nightclub overlooking the Bosphorus that has 6 high-end restaurants inside in addition to bars, dancing, etc.), had dinner on the rooftop of the Four Seasons Sultanahmet (global nomad salon), and, though we didn't get to Sofyali in Beyoglu (it was closed on Sunday), ate at a fantastic meyhane nearby called Gedikli. (The garlic yogurt dip, rich dolmathes, and marinated artichoke hearts were my favorite dishes.)

As for coffee (I knew you'd ask): I was disappointed by both of our hotels' lame attempts at cappuccino (too large and milky) and drip coffee (weak and just plain old bad). Turkish coffee was inevitably silty and not all that tasty. I resisted the many Starbucks outlets and stumbled upon my best cup of coffee at the unlikeliest of places: a Turkish jewelry chain. Storks has a cafe right near the Grand Bazaar; and there, in addition to cappuccino, you can order single origin coffees from Kenya, Sumatra, etc.—in a french press! O.K., so my coffee cost 7 Turkish Lira (about $5.50) but it was worth it. I'm only sorry that the Frugal Traveler (AKA Matt Gross) couldn't join me. (He was touching down in Istanbul between Northern Cyprus and Bucharest to file a story but went to the wrong Storks—and our plans to meet for coffee and run through the Grand Bazaar one last time were dashed)

At any rate, after so many adventures, it's nice to be back in Brooklyn. Happy 4th of July!

29 May 2008

If you live in Seattle or Portland, the idea of a coffee tasting is probably not new to you--Stumptown's Annex (which has been around since 2005) has three public cuppings a day. But here in New York, the foodie capital of the country, cuppings have taken awhile to catch on. But as I discovered over the past three months while reporting this story in today's Times, public cuppings are happening at all of the city's best coffee shops including Joe, Gimme! Coffee, Ninth Street Espresso, Cafe Grumpy, and even at new arrivals such as El Beit in Williamsburg, Southside in Park Slope, and Everyman Espresso.

Coffee, like wine, has a distinct terroir: each growing region and micro-climate lends unique flavor characteristics to the beans. To highlight this, many of these so-called third wave coffee shops brew and sell single-origin coffees—coffees that come from not only a specific country, but sometimes from a specific farm or even from an isolated lot on that farm that yields the highest quality beans. (Called a “micro-lot.”) In other words, not blends, which is what most Americans drink when they drink coffee.

The only way to train one’s palate to differentiate between an Ethiopian natural and an El Salvador Bourbon, for example, is to taste single origin coffees side by side—without the adulteration of milk or sugar—at a cupping. Some of the roasters and baristas I spoke to talked about their first cupping as if it were a religious experience--an "A-ha" moment that made them realize how unique individual coffees can be.

I haven't had my A-ha moment yet, but I have learned to detect certain flavors in the single origins I've slurped over the past few months. My palate still has a long way to go, though. One thing's for sure--I've started drinking citrusy coffees like Counter Culture's Kenyan Kangocho Peaberry without milk--the first time I've willingly drunk coffee black since college. (Something else I learned: coffee is naturally sweet.)

So if you're curious, see if your local coffee shop is hosting cuppings. A friend tells me that the new Intelligentsia in Silverlake (L.A.) has 'em, as does Counter Culture in Durham and PT's Coffee in Kansas. Just remember to spit--especially if it's an evening cupping.

08 May 2008

Interesting tidbit I learned last night at a coffee cupping at Café Grumpy: there are 50 beans in each shot of espresso. So I'm drinking the equivalent of 100 beans each day when I have my small (double) latte at El Beit.

18 April 2008

If, like me, you've taken Michael Pollan's latest two books to heart and are a CSA-loving locavore, then you've probably been to Portland, Oregon, where even the local burger chain has a seasonally driven menu. (See my item on Burgervillefor Good magazine.)

On my most recent trip, I discovered a city buzzing with youthful energy—Portland is, after all, home to innovative companies such as Weiden + Kennedy (ad agency for Nike, Starbucks, and Visa), Laika (Phil Knight’s ambitious new animation studio) and Nau (an edgy eco-apparel firm). The city is fast becoming a center of cutting-edge green architecture, design, and fashion—as well as a foodie's paradise. (One gourmand friend, whose wife is a chef in NYC, came back from her recent trip to Portland swearing that the restaurants there are consistently better than New York's.) My "Letter from Portland" in the summer issue of Town & Country Travel is a good primer, but it's by no means exhaustive. Others favorites, which there wasn't space to cover: Nostrana, Pok Pok, and Simpatica Dining Hall. (And ones I have yet to try: 23 Hoyt, Country Cat, and Ten 01.)

01 September 2007

Philadelphia has long been one of my favorite U.S. cities—artsy and edgy with memorably good restaurants. But it wasn't until I had to report on it for Endless Vacation that I did all the touristy things like taking the (tiny) elevator to the top of City Hall (totally worth it for 360-degree views) and touring Independence Hall and the new National Constitution Center. My favorite meal this time? I'd say it was either the chef's menu at Tinto or the Mexican feast (with fresh guacamole) at Xochitl...though the buttery fusilli with fava beans, mint, and pecorino I had at Marc Vetri's Osteria was also divine. Read more here.